Sullivan, Bentley considering a run for IPS school board

Two high profile Democrats who support school choice and accountability-based education reforms are strongly considering bids for the Indianapolis Public School Board.

Kelly Bentley is a former IPS school board member and long-time critic of the district’s prior leadership, which she said resisted change in her time on the board. Former state representative Mary Ann Sullivan was sometimes the lone legislative Democrat voting in favor of charter schools and other education policy ideas that are more identified with Republicans in Indiana. Both were involved with Democrats for Education Reform, a group that promotes ideas like charter schools and school accountability to Democrats.

Bentley said she is giving serious consideration to run, but said it was too early to announce a decision. Sullivan said she has officially converted a campaign committee set up for her 2012 state senate run to a school board exploratory committee.

“I am absolutely giving it some very serious consideration,” Sullivan said of a potential board run. “It feels like the right time and right place to put my focus.”

Kelly Bentley

Bentley said the work of new Superintendent Lewis Ferebee has prompted her to consider a try to return to her prior seat on the board.

“I’m motivated by all the positive energy I see happening right now,” she said. “It’s super exciting to focus locally on what’s possible.”

If the two join the race, it would be mark the second consecutive school board contest featuring candidates who share what previously had been an outsider view of IPS. All have said the central office should be significantly reduced, school autonomy increased and cooperation pursued with charter schools, which the district traditionally had viewed as competitors.

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Bentley lives in the district represented by Samantha Adair-White, who is in the final year of her first term on the board and has not announced if she plans to seek re-election. If she runs, Sullivan said she would likely seek the at-large seat held by school board President Annie Roof. Roof, also finishing her first term in office, last week announced on Facebook that she plans to run again.

The other board member who’s term is up this year is Michael Brown, who has represented the Northwest side of the city for more than a decade. He also said he plans to run again.

In 2012, the IPS school board election produced a sea-change result. Long-term incumbents Mary Busch and Marianna Zaphiriou, strong White supporters, retired and were replaced by Caitilin Hannon and Sam Odle, both of whom pushed for change. Another White ally, Elizabeth Gore, was defeated by Gayle Cosby.

Those three joined with Diane Arnold, who was reelected, to form a new change-oriented majority on the board that quickly set a new direction in 2013. They bought out the contract of former IPS Superintendent Eugene White, cut the budget and hired Ferebee.

Roof, Adair-White and, to a lesser extent, Brown have joined in supporting the new direction in many instances, including the selection of Ferebee. But Brown voted no on some key change-related issues issues, such as White’s buy out and layoffs that resulted from budget cuts.

Ferebee has ruffled the feathers of Democrats, unions and other traditional IPS allies by professing a desire to cooperate with charter schools. He helped write a bill now moving through the legislature which would allow charters to share space in IPS buildings and permit IPS to designate some of its own schools as “innovation schools” run by charter groups or other outside organizations.

Opponents of the bill have complained that it could force teachers out from under union protections and higher IPS wages, as the outside mangers of innovation schools will employ the staff and set those terms.

Mary Ann Sullivan

Sullivan, who left the legislature after an unsuccessful run for the senate in 2012, said the school board’s efforts over the past year to move in a new direction are admirable but the district’s children need more.

Sullivan’s children attended IPS. Her daughter is now a teacher in the district and her grandson attends an IPS school. Her opponent, Roof, is an IPS graduate and her children attend the district.

“One of the things that’s a challenge is the basic fairness for kids throughout the system,” Sullivan said. “Access to a great school is not even throughout the district. It comes through very powerfully in certain neighborhoods. Those kids don’t have a good school option for them.”

Neither Sullivan nor Bentley said they had particularly complaints about Roof or Adair-White, their potential opponents this fall. Both said they were pleased by Ferebee’s efforts, particularly to forge partnerships that would have been unthinkable in the White era.

“As an outsider looking in, I’m really impressed,” Bentley said. “I feel confident that there can be some really significant change in the district that needs to happen. There are some great people on the board. I think I could help support some of the initiatives the superintendent and some of the board members are interested in.”

The addition of Sullivan and Bentley could draw renewed attention to the school board race, and perhaps draw candidates with traditional Democratic views about IPS or with union connections.

Teresa Meredith, president of the Indiana State Teachers Association, said decisions about supporting and encouraging candidates is driven by the local union, in this case the Indianapolis Education Association, which she said has not asked for additional help or support. At this point, Meredith said, there are no plans for ISTA involvement in the IPS race.

Still, Sullivan said she expects she and Bentley are not the only ones considering a run.

“It may be an elevated profile race,” she said. “I kind of think that would be a good thing. Maybe we’ll get a lot of conversations going. That would be the best outcome that can come from a highly contesting school board race.”

From forest preschools to a secret apology, here are Chalkbeat Colorado’s must-read stories of 2018

We spend a lot of time at Chalkbeat chasing the news to keep our readers informed about controversial policy changes, fast-moving debates, and late-breaking decisions.

But we also relish the opportunity to dig deep into issues affecting students and families, shine light on innovative ideas, and hear from dedicated educators making a difference. With that in mind, we’ve gathered 10 of our best stories from 2018.

These stories don’t necessarily chronicle the biggest education issues of 2018, from teacher walkouts to unprecedented state interventions. But they are stories we think are important and insightful, and that we enjoyed reporting and writing. We hope you enjoy reading them.

One day this past summer, about a dozen children frolicked by a Jefferson County creek — making pretend tea in small metal buckets, and building dams with sticks and mud.

They were students at Worldmind Nature Immersion School, where children spend all their time outside. So-called forest preschools like Worldmind are beloved by many families but face significant regulatory and logistical barriers in expanding their footprint nationwide. Here in Colorado, a pilot program could lead a new kind of child care license designed for them.

And being licensed could help the schools confront another problem: a lack of diversity among their students. Read more.

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It was an oft-cited statistic: that Colorado, despite its booming economy, ranked 46th in the nation for teacher pay. The eye-popping number found its way onto social media posts and signs at massive teacher rallies last spring. News outlets latched on to it, too.

But it was wrong. Colorado was actually ranked 30th in the nation.

Our story breaks down how the mistake happened (hint: a new data system, an unrevised report) — and how groups with different agendas seized on the snafu to score points. Read more.

The Adams 14 district in Commerce City is arguably the most troubled and low-performing in Colorado. Just last month, state officials directed Adams 14 to hire an external manager to oversee the district’s operations for at least the next four years.

Back in September, Adams 14 officials considered taking a rare step: saying sorry to the community. But an apology letter was never signed nor sent out.

Chalkbeat obtained a copy of the letter, which makes mention of “various and conflicting priorities, coupled with constant turnover and organizational disarray.” Read more.

Colorado’s largest school district experienced a big change this year when longtime leader Tom Boasberg announced he would step down after nearly 10 years in Denver Public Schools.

Because of his school improvement strategies — some of which were controversial and heightened tensions with the community — the district that the new superintendent, Susana Cordova, will inherit in January is vastly different than it was a decade ago.

One tangible difference: Schools that once served as anchors of the community but struggled academically have been closed or replaced. That disappearance was on display on one of Boasberg’s last days, when he held his cell phone close to his mouth and enunciated each word so his GPS would understand his direction: “Montbello High School.” Read more.

Like many schools in Colorado, Aurora’s Rangeview High School has a test score gap between white and black students. But the assistant principal there came up with a unique way to try to address it: by inviting black parents to visit classrooms and observe how students are — or are not — engaging with the teacher’s lesson, and then provide suggestions for improvement.

“We give true and honest feedback,” said one parent involved, “if they looked or appeared comfortable, how they interacted with the environment, the temperature of the room.”

Although the assistant principal considers the African American Parent Committee an experiment, she said it’s generating uncomfortable but necessary conversations. Read more.

For years, more moderate Democrats, often working in unison with like-minded Republicans, championed education reform efforts ranging from school choice to holding educators accountable for student performance.

But partly because of backlash against President Donald Trump and his education secretary, those strategies no longer fly with many Democrats — especially left-leaning Democrats who see them as undercutting public education and devaluing the work of teachers.

That sentiment was palpable in Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, and could shape the next legislative session, which starts in January. “Education is the issue that really stands to divide the left in a very substantial way,” one observer said. Read more.

School improvement efforts look a little different high in the Rocky Mountains. While many of the strategies used by the 1,000-student Lake County school district are familiar to urban settings, they’ve been retrofitted to meet the needs of a district that’s 100 miles west of Denver.

For example, instead of firing teachers and principals who weren’t accelerating student learning fast enough, the district adopted a new curriculum and gave its teachers lots of training.

“The belief that the people are the problem is wrong,” the superintendent said. “Our teachers are professionals, and we believe in them. We’re proving that there is a framework or a pathway for rural schools to improve that’s about building capacity within your own community.” Read more.

After state lawmakers rejected a bill to limit the use of suspensions in the earliest grades, Chalkbeat wanted to know more about the early childhood discipline landscape in Colorado. Data from the Colorado Department of Education revealed several trends.

Among them: Young black boys are suspended at disproportionate rates. Some rural school districts have the highest early childhood suspension rates in the state.

And despite nationwide debate about the impact of harsh discipline on young children and local efforts to bring the numbers down, suspensions in the early grades are actually going up. Read more.

Many neighborhoods in Denver are gentrifying, with middle-class families moving into what have historically been working-class communities. That type of demographic shift could easily lead to neighborhood schools that are more integrated by family income and race.

But that doesn’t always happen in Denver. Instead, data show that wealthier families – more often than low-income families – are using Denver Public Schools’ universal school choice process to send their kids to schools elsewhere in the city.

That’s a problem because research shows integrated schools boost test scores for students from low-income families without lowering the scores of those from wealthier ones. Denver officials want to see those benefits, but allowing parents to choose may be thwarting them. Read more.

Northglenn High School Principal Sharee Blunt is Colorado’s 2018 School Principal of the year — but perhaps even more impressive is the enormous number of birthday cards she hand delivers each year. If you’re one of those people who can barely remember your spouse’s birthday, you’ll be floored by Blunt’s annual feat.

In our interview with Blunt, part of Chalkbeat’s “How I Lead” Q&A series with distinguished school leaders, she talks about what she realized after a mother’s emotional reaction, and why she gave a teacher a pass during a lesson that went awry. Read more.

Some 500 unionized teachers joined in the nation’s first charter strike last week, and succeeded in negotiating wage increases, smaller class sizes and a shorter school day. Their gains could foreshadow next year’s citywide contract negotiations — between the Chicago Teachers Union, with its contract expiring in June, and Chicago Public Schools.

“The issue of class size is going to be huge,” said Chris Geovanis, the union’s director of communications. “It is a critically important issue in every school.”

Unlike their counterparts in charters, though, teachers who work at district-run schools can’t technically go on strike to push through a cap on the number of students per class. That’s because the Illinois Education Labor Relations Act defines what issues non-charter public school teachers can bargain over, and what issues can lead to a strike.

An impasse on issues of compensation or those related to working conditions, such as length of the school day or teacher evaluations, could precipitate a strike. But disagreements over class sizes or school closures, among other issues, cannot be the basis for a strike.

The number of students per class has long been a point of contention among both district and charter school teachers.

Educators at Acero had hopes of pushing the network to limit class sizes to 24-28 students, depending on the grade. However, as Acero teachers capped their fourth day on the picket line, they reached an agreement with the charter operator on a cap of 30 students — down from the current cap of 32 students.

Andy Crooks, a special education apprentice, also known as a teacher’s aide, at Acero’s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz school and a member of the teachers bargaining team, said that even having two fewer students in a classroom would make a huge difference.

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“You really do get a lot more time with your students,” Crooks said. “And if you are thinking about kindergarten in particular, two less 5-year-olds really can help set the tone of the classroom.”

In district-run schools, classes are capped at 28 students in kindergarten through third grade, and at 31 students in fourth through sixth grade. But a survey by the advocacy group Parents 4 Teachers, which supports educators taking on inequality, found that during the 2017-2018 school year, 21 percent of K-8 classrooms had more students than district guidelines allowed. In 18 elementary school classrooms, there were 40 or more students.

The issue came up at last week’s Board of Education meeting, at which Ivette Hernandez, a parent of a first-grader at Virgil Grissom Elementary School in the city’s Hegewisch neighborhood, said her son’s classes have had more than 30 students in them. When the children are so young and active — and when they come into classrooms at so many different skill levels — “the teachers can’t handle 30 kids in one class,” she told the board.

Alderman Sue Garza, a former counselor, accompanied Hernandez. She also spoke before the board about classroom overcrowding — worrying aloud that, in some grades at one school in particular, the number of students exceeded the building’s fire codes. (Board chair Frank Clark said a district team would visit the school to ensure compliance fire safety policies.)

While the Chicago Teachers Union aren’t technically allowed to strike over class sizes, the union does have a history of pushing the envelope when it comes to bargaining.

Back in 2012, when the Chicago Teachers Union last went on strike, they ended up being able to secure the first limit on class sizes in 20 years because the district permitted the union to bargain over class size.

They also led a bargaining campaign that included discussion over racial disparities in Chicago education and school closures, arguing that these trends impacted the working conditions of teachers.

“Even if you can’t force an employer to bargain over an issue, you can push them to bargain over the impact of an issue,” Bob Bruno, a labor professor at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, explained.

The Chicago Teachers Union also emerged from its 2012 negotiations with guarantees of additional “wraparound services,” such as access to onsite social workers and school counselors.